compare/contrast

Character Development in Joyce Carol Oates ' Where Are You Going , Where Have You Been ' and Amy Tan 's Two Kinds Both Joyce Carol Oates ' Where Are You Going , Where Have You Been and Amy Tan 's Two Kinds ' explore the characters of young women coming of age . In Oates ' story , Connie is a vain girl only interested in her own physical looks , and the story ends with her in a vague though clearly dangerous situation with an unknown men . Indeed , the interests of Connie coincide perfectly with her ending : just as the reader

knows nothing about the character of Connie , there is no information about her assailants or the ultimate results of her encounter with them . In Tan 's story , though , the unnamed narrator struggles with her own development as a person , constantly fighting to not let her mother turn her into something that she 's not and attempting to establish herself as the person she truly is . This complexity allows the reader to read the story as a complicated journey of personal development , and all of the background information that the reader gets about this narrator further creates a fully-shaped person in the reader 's mind . In both stories , the complexity of the character is essential to the story 's message Connie 's initial flatness demonstrates both her vanity and the broader statement the story makes about superficiality in general , which is somewhat subverted by the highly dramatic and selfless end which Connie faces , while the Two Kinds ' narrator...